


Another Of Your Escapes

by morganya



Category: British Actor RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-15
Updated: 2006-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/morganya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not everything can be explained away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Of Your Escapes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Fryandorlaurie Rareathon. Much gratitude to potatofiend for beta'ing and thrashing my verbiage into submission.

Jude has been naked all day. Or maybe it just seems like it. It shouldn't count as anything, really; the logistics of film demand a certain degree of trickery. Jude only _appears_ to be naked. Hundreds of years of civilization, Stephen thinks, to culminate in this: the knob sock, this puritanical merkin, this guard against the corrupting influence of cinema.

Jude appears oblivious to any potential awkwardness. He straddles Stephen's hips with lean, assiduously tanned legs, while Brian sets up the cameras for the fortieth time. Stephen's back hurts from lying down. Jude graciously accepts a touch up on makeup. Dyed blonde, Jude seems an artistic representation of Bosie, refined and purified until he seems unreal, a demon cherub with haunted eyes.

Stephen lies still, forcing himself not to talk, ignoring his aching back, looking studiously at the ceiling to avoid catching sight of his own long, pale softness. He knows he's incongruous in the ornate set. He's been carefully made-up, slathered in foundation until the last single spot or blemish is concealed. Jude's been anointed with something - glycerine or glycol or some other chemical starting with _gly_ \- and he virtually shimmers. Like a mirage of an oasis, Stephen thinks, as if he's not quite real.

Nothing, Stephen thinks, is real here. He'd thought it would have been easier to realize that, that he'd be distracted by the cameras and microphones. All it is, he thinks, is a perfect facsimile of fucking, sanitized until it loses all meaning, becoming a series of movements, an artful suggestion of touch. Above him, Jude throws his head back and gasps, eyes closing, disconsolate mouth parting.

 _... And beheld Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep, Shot forth peculiar graces._

Stephen touches Jude's back, feeling the shiver of blood under the skin.

Jude leans down over him, brushes soft lips against his, a nibbling kiss, a momentary taste. He pulls away and kisses Stephen's cheek, settling into his arms, looking for all the world like he's just gone to sleep.

And then they call cut.

"That would be all, I think," Brian says. "Six tomorrow, gents."

Jude immediately gets off the bed, stretching as though he's just woken. He takes the robe one of the PAs offers him and shrugs it on. The robe falls open as he ties the waist, showing golden skin, pale nipples. "Best sex scene I ever shot," he tells Stephen breezily, laughing, and goes to change.

Reality, Stephen thinks, always loses out over film.

*****

Oscar keeps appearing in his dreams. Stephen doesn't quite know how to explain it, and Oscar doesn't seem to want to divulge anything to him.

He shows up in Stephen's study, the Sarony photograph turned to blinding life, careless and perfect in velvet and green silk. He runs a finger over the spines of the books, giving a disapproving sniff to those he finds unacceptable. Stephen sits at the desk and watches him. He smokes cigarette after cigarette, pondering how exactly to go about introducing himself when it seems Oscar's already familiar with him.

"I must say," Stephen says finally, "that this isn't the meeting I would have pictured. I'd been thinking of something a little more Freudian. Or more cinematic, at least, if I couldn't have the psychological complexity. Perhaps we'd come across each other at a glamorous cocktail party, rub shoulders with the Victorian elite, that sort of thing."

Oscar takes a book (it looks like Rilke) and settles onto Stephen's couch. There's an odd clumsiness about his movements, as if he's just discovering his body. He looks at Stephen, half-smiling, eyes cool as a lion's. "My dear, would you really prefer that we be introduced at some forgettable affair with conversation as memorable as a tea cake? And I'm sure your vulgar alienist will have even less to say for himself."

"It'd probably have something to do with my mother," Stephen says. "But it's not about that, really."

"What is it, then?"

"This isn't real, you see. You can use psychology or archetypal imagery or the curry I had for dinner or whatever you like to explain, but you're not really here, are you? You're dead, I'm sorry to tell you."

"Let's not speak existentially at this time of night," Oscar says. "I'm quite enjoying not being real. My old habit of eavesdropping has become much easier."

"You are a random neural spasm of mine," Stephen says. "I've read too much of your work, I've thought about you too much since we've been doing the film, I've admired you so -"

"Don't be tiresome," Oscar says. "I'm frightfully bored with compliments." He puts the book down. "Come show me around your home now."

There's no mistaking an order when he hears it, and Stephen rises and takes Oscar's outstretched arm, leading him out of the study. Under the velvet coat, Oscar feels improbably substantial, already running to flesh behind the aesthetic exterior.

"I'm trying to figure out a reason why," Stephen says. "You wouldn't care to explain, would you?"

Oscar looks at him. "Should you feel more correct if I did? Will you always be explaining yourself, Stephen?"

The sound of his name in Oscar's mouth jolts him awake. He pulls himself off the couch, his shoulders tensed and aching, and drags himself upstairs to bed.

*****

Jude's fiancée comes to the set just minutes after the last shot of the day. She waits as the cameramen start to dismantle the cameras, saying nothing. She has a baby in her arms. It takes Jude ten minutes to see her, Stephen notices. They're on the way back to Wardrobe, still clad in sumptuous Victoriana, when he finally spots her. Jude looks shocked.

"Thought you were filming!"

"A day off," she explains. "Thought we'd come see Daddy at work, didn't we?"

He hurries over, quickly kissing her mouth and taking the baby. "Here. Stephen, this is Sadie, my girlfriend -"

"Listen to him," she laughs. She seems insubstantial in the commercial Romantic fashion, dark-haired and pixyish. Her skin is pale and flawless as a mirror.

"Fiancée," Jude corrects himself. "Sorry."

"Jude," Stephen scolds. "What an appalling sort of introduction. Hello." He bends and kisses Sadie's proffered cheek, getting the faint powdery smell of foundation as he does so.

"And this is my boy," Jude says, shifting the baby onto his hip. The baby stares solemnly up at Stephen, blue eyed and blond, a picture postcard.

"Hello there, young man," Stephen says softly, touching a tiny pink fist with one finger. The baby grabs on and babbles at him.

"He likes you," Sadie says.

"I suppose I look familiar to him somehow," Stephen says. "Like Mercer Mayer's Beast, I imagine. Dressed as Wilde."

She smiles politely. Jude says, "Stephen's clever."

"Oh, you must be," she says.

Jude laughs and puts his free arm around her shoulders. It's a living tableau: father, mother, and child. Jude looks misplaced in time, still clad in Bosie-skin, next to Sadie's expertly tailored jeans and silken shirt. Still, they seem to fit together, both delicate-boned and fair, the baby really only an extension of themselves. They look as if they've never known a moment's awkwardness. Stephen wonders if that was how they first got to know each other, an automatic topic of conversation, already linked together by way of the Beatles. _Sexy Sadie, what have you done/You made a fool of everyone..._

"I should get to Wardrobe," Jude says. He hands her the baby. "Just a minute."

"Hmm," she says patiently.

When Jude's gone, Stephen says, "He's wonderful in the role, of course. It's quite extraordinary, you'd think he was a reincarnation."

Sadie jogs the baby on her hip, both businesslike and fond, one half of a power couple, temporarily on her own. "Jude makes everything seem natural."

*****

He sends an email to Hugh, writing about what's been happening in his usual effusive style, mentioning Jude, how extraordinary it all is, how unreal it all seems still. He mentions Brian, how cold it was the other day, all the things that make up topics of conversation.

Hugh writes him back, just one sentence - Hugh's elegant economy - _Please be careful, Stephen._

He looks at the message for twenty minutes, and writes back: _You have a talent for saying exactly what I've been thinking to myself._

*****

"Art," Oscar tells him, "must never bother with reality. I never cared to examine it."

"'All art is quite useless,' you mean?" Stephen says. "Or are you going to tell me about something else?"

"Uselessness has its place," Oscar says. "What use is there for beauty? We have need for it, we have desire, but is that a use?"

"I wouldn't call a model to come fix my sink, if that's what you mean," Stephen says. He's standing in his kitchen, vigorously stirring batter as the griddle sizzles in front of him. Oscar stands off to his side, watching quietly.

Somewhere, he knows it's just another dream, another fragment of his brain chemistry, but it's easier to ignore that now. Oscar still wears his Sarony gear, but it's grown a little worn and wrinkled, as though he's been sleeping in it for days. The coat looks dusty.

"But then, I wouldn't trust _myself_ to fix a sink," Stephen says. "That's got nothing to do with beauty, or art for that matter, I simply don't have the time for it."

"Your explanations." Oscar sits down. "Does your life go on like this, like stops along the railroad?"

"Of course it doesn't," Stephen says. He spoons batter onto the griddle and hears it sizzle. "I thought you were going to tell me about art, did you lose your train of thought, speaking of railroads?"

"I am telling you, dear boy. You merely like to try to distract me."

"I beg your pardon," Stephen says.

"Your conversation focuses on anything but yourself."

"I _only_ talk about myself," Stephen says. He puts the pancakes on a plate and brings it over to Oscar before turning his attention back to the matter at hand. "It's my best subject."

"Only if it's inconsequential."

"I do believe -"

"There is nothing you can't conversationally escape."

"I didn't ask you to start rabbitting on about trains -"

"But you will tell me about how you can't fix a sink. As if _anyone_ noteworthy ever fixed a sink."

"Why am I even talking to you like this?" Stephen says. "I thought I had better manners."

"I _do_ wish," Oscar says, "that you'd choose between the explanations and the questions. I get quite dizzy from the alternating."

"I'm only curious."

Oscar smiles softly at him. "The unknown is not a personal affront."

He doesn't answer. He stalls by grabbing the spatula and going to flip the pancake; his wrist brushes against the side of the griddle with a strange, disconnected shock of dream-pain. He jerks back nonetheless. "Ah, fuckshit!"

"Vulgarity," Oscar says, and laughs. "Another of your escapes, Stephen?"

He wakes up hanging over the side of his bed. His wrist aches.

*****

On Jude's last day of shooting, Stephen takes him out for one last drink. He feels awkward out of the Oscar costume, his hair pulled back, his jacket resting stiffly across his shoulders. Jude sits in the snug, Bosie abandoned but for the dyed blond hair, careless and elegant in black trousers and shirt.

"Cheers. I was wondering if I was going to get a proper send-off," he tells Stephen.

"It's only fair," Stephen says. "Ensuring that you'll remember my grizzled visage in the flower of your fame."

"You know I said that you were my best screen kiss."

Stephen puts the pints down on the table. "Really?"

"Of course."

"Oh my. That's very kind, thank you."

"Other times, you're always thinking about the cameras or the microphones or your...choreography. It's always good to find someone who can make it feel real for a moment."

"I was, of course, utterly terrified throughout the day."

Jude blinks.

"It's really rather ridiculous," Stephen says. "Taking your clothes off on screen."

"But you must have some experience."

"Jokes and japes," Stephen says. "It's easier to forget when you're trying to get a laugh."

"It's never bothered me."

"You're more of an actor than I am," Stephen says. "I always just feel like myself, really."

"Well, also, it's..." Jude stares at him. "I know I'm not ugly." He says it like a challenge.

"Of course not, but your pulchritude has..."

"Gay men," Jude says.

"Where?"

"No, I mean as fans. The majority of people who watch my films are gay men. Or a significant number, anyway. That's what my agent tells me."

"Do you mean to tell me," Stephen says, laughing, "that they went to the theatres and actually demanded to know everyone's sexual orientation? You don't happen to employ Alfred Kinsey as an agent, do you?"

Jude laughs and shrugs. "I only go on what I'm told."

"'Lies, damned lies and statistics,'" Stephen says. "One must nourish the auditory nerve on something, after all."

Jude laughs again. "I don't have a problem with it, if it's true."

"I'm simply amazed that they would take the trouble -"

"Stephen," Jude says. "I don't have a problem with it. At all."

Stephen touches his glass. It feels slick with moisture, abnormally warm. He lights a cigarette.

"I know that -"

"Jude, don't say things like that," he says. "I mean, on-screen kisses are one matter, but this is another one altogether."

Jude smiles, insinuating, tempting. "I thought you might like this one more."

Stephen puts down the glass. "You will," he says, "have many more screen kisses, Jude. And off-screen ones."

"I know that."

Stephen thinks that he's never met anyone so used to being adored, so ready to be adored. It all comes naturally to Jude.

It doesn't come naturally to him.

"Sadie is lovely," Stephen says.

"She is."

"And your family is lovely."

"Yes."

Stephen finishes his drink and stubs out his cigarette. "Thank you for being Bosie," he says. "It couldn't have been more perfect."

Jude tilts his head, still smiling. "Thank you, Stephen."

*****

Stephen sits on the edge of the bed, smoking. Oscar sits silently across from him, eyes full of sympathetic disappointment.

"I would just like to say," Stephen says, "that this was _not_ an escape. Or perhaps it was, but it was the _correct_ one."

"Reality seems so drab," Oscar says. "Compared to what could have been."

"I _know_ what could have been, Oscar. It was laid out like a fucking map in front of me."

"And you take the safest road."

"Well, what else was I supposed to do?"

Oscar comes and sits next to him. "I'm afraid that neither of us knows everything."

"I know," Stephen says, "what happened to you, Oscar. How your life ended."

Oscar touches his shoulder. "And yet you're not me, my dear. No matter how you pretend."

Stephen shuts his eyes. "You can't tell me, if you'd known what he'd do to you, what would happen to your family, that you would have -"

"I could not say," Oscar says. "I've never had much use for reason."

"I just wanted there to be a meaning," he says. "If there's not, if it means nothing -"

Oscar pushes the hair back from Stephen's forehead with a dry, weightless hand. "But it always means something to you, Stephen."

He starts awake and staggers into the bathroom. In the mirror, his face is pale, his eyes dark, his hair lying flat and smoothed by an invisible hand.


End file.
